AFTERMATH: A POST-HOLIDAYS SENRYU

After the New Year,A Christmas treeAt every trash bin.

It may look like hokku, having the same outer form — the same “shell,” but it is not. It is the subject matter that makes it something else, and that something else is senryu.

Senryu, you may recall, is hokku’s “evil twin.” While hokku are about Nature and humans as a part of Nature, senryu points out and pokes fun at human foibles — all the peculiar quirks of human nature that are both sad and comical. And though this verse has an obvious season (mention of the New Year), while senryu is not specifically seasonal verse, the content of this one makes it very obviously senryu.